Gordon Brown should announce the abolition of NHS prescription charges to outflank the Tories after Labour's poor performance in the local elections, the Fabian Society will urge this week.

A dramatic gesture would mirror the "Tory coup" on raising the inheritance threshold to £1m and would resonate throughout the labour movement, the thinktank's general secretary, Sunder Katwala, will say.

"The 60th anniversary year [of the NHS] offers a good moment to strengthen the core NHS principle of universal access, free at the point of use," Katwala writes in an article for Tribune in which he announces that he will table a formal demand on prescription charges to Labour's policy making forum. "Gordon Brown and Alan Johnson should reopen the argument about whether patients should be charged for prescriptions, and announce a plan to scrap in England as Labour has done under devolution in Wales."

Katwala says Labour should learn from the Tories' inheritance tax pledge. "There is a lesson here for Labour's fightback after May's local election drubbing. But that lesson is not the necessity of retreat in the face of rightwing attacks. Rather it is how Labour could mirror that Tory coup with a popular agenda rooted in our values."